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Reasons not to intern

Hehehe, I’m still subscribed to the RSS feeds of Business Week’s MBA Diaries. I started reading these when I first started considering an MBA, way back in mid-2003, and kept on reading them during the course of my MBA experience. I guess they acted as a kind of control group, against which I could check my own progress. I never got round to unsubscribing, although I don’t read them very often these days. I just took a look though, and one of them really got my attention: Rachael Klein on why doing an internship while classes are ongoing is a really bad idea. I totally agree. My own internship spanned a break period and my final semester; it was great, really rewarding, during the holiday but it was a mistake to have let it carry on into term time. It definitely meant that I didn’t get the best experience during my exchange period at Tsinghua, and led to an enormous amount of stress and unpleasantness. Don’t do it unless you really know what you’re doing…

Three years of effort

I’ve been transferring a lot of  posts from my old MBA blog across in the last couple of days, so it’s fresh in my mind what I was thinking when I first applied to do an MBA back in late 2003…

Three years of effort, intense study, a love affair that preoccupied me but eventually didn’t last. My entire net worth. High temper, great friends, the jungle, dawn taiji, Beijing,  a wonderful experience at Tsinghua. Despair and exhaustion.

If I’d known what lay ahead of me, back then in 2003, would I still have applied? I think so.

Today I graduate. Then, that’s it; the MBA is finally, officially, over and done with.

Aah, Paris

Julia, one of my fellow MBA exchange students at Tsinghua, is back at ESSEC and continuing her studies. She’s just posted a few pictures of springtime in Paris and, I have to say, I’m just a tad envious!

Still… Beijing is nice in the spring as well (give or take a few sandstorms!). In my last week there, I went out to the Fragrant Hills to visit the shop attached to a martial arts equipment factory; it was a wonderful sunny day, with a cloudless blue sky, and the hills truly were fragrant with the scent of all the trees waking up up for spring! They must all be in bloom now…

Higher education in Beijing

There’s a really interesting article in Dissent Magazine, a website I’ve only just discovered via Singabloodypore. The article is a Brit’s experience of teaching political science at Tsinghua University. As a British alumnus of Tsinghua, of course I find this interesting.

The author had previously taught at the National University of Singapore, so it’s also very interesting to see his comparison of the two universities.

From my personal experience, I will agree with him. I feel that the environment in Beijing is much more conducive to speaking openly than it is here in Singapore, though the reasons for that would take longer to think through and write down than I can spare at the moment – I’ve got code to compile!

Putting a name to a face…

I was in Sculpting in Time last night, and ran into a Singaporean who is on exchange in Tsinghua right now. We wound up having a discussion about challenges facing Singapore right now – partly because I was reading Alain Vandenborre’s book, Proudly Singaporean at the time. I need to make it a bit clearer when I talk about this subject, on this blog as much as anywhere else, that even though I see problems and things I disagree with in Singapore and can be passionate about discussing them, I nevertheless like the place very much, and feel very attached to it! This is a roundabout way of getting to say that one thing I like is the strong Indian culture there. When I went back in January, pretty much the first thing I did was head up to Little India for a decent curry. I also decided I wanted to pick up some Indian music, which I always like listening to but know very little about. I went to the music section in Mustafa’s (but the offical site’s not very interesting – read this as well), and asked the attendant for a recommendation. He gave me a DVD of wedding songs, culled from various Bollywood films. Watching it back in China, I realised that the woman on the cover was also in many of the clips – and was absolutely stunning. I had no idea who she was, though, and no way to find out. Today, I was reading an online article from an Indian paper, and happened to click on to another page, to see a picture of the same actress… It turns out that she is Aishwarya Rai… Wow – that’s all I’m saying! (Picture from aishwaryaworld gallery). Aah, found this relatively recent CBS article…

MBA evolution: a challenge for Singapore

Interesting to see in the IHT today that INSEAD is setting up a joint EMBA with Tsinghua university.

I bet this will just be the beginning – more Western b-schools will establish joint MBAs, and Chinese (and Indian) campuses will follow. I’m interested in this of course because I spent a trimester at Tsinghua. A number of people I know, such as Qian Xiaojun, are mentioned. Also, as of this year, exchange students are also eligible to join the Tsinghua MBA alumni group, which (given Tsinghua’s prestige in China) you can bet I’ll be making the most of.

I’m also interested because it quotes Hooi Den Huan, who was my Marketing prof at NBS, and is now the vice-dean. He says “We have definitely seen a decreasing number of applications from China within the last couple of years, maybe something like 20 percent”. A 20% drop in applications is definitely not good – and I know NBS is worried about it, as I discussed this with people there when I was last back in Singapore.

The implications affect more than just NBS, though. Singapore is trying to position itself as an ‘education hub’ for Asia. (Members of my MBA Strategy class will know that I think the ‘hub’ strategy is too diffuse, but let’s not get started on that now). he trouble is, what can Singapore offer to attract world-clas institutions? It doesn’t have a domestic market. It does have a strong legal environment, which worked to attract MNCs, but as recent events with Warwick University showed, this isn’t necessarily going to help attract universities.

The other issue is that Singapore is often described as “Asia for Beginners” – a safe place to start for Westerners to get to know the Asian market. I wonder if the creation of CEIBS, this new EMBA, and plenty of other ventures such as the new university being set up in Suzhou by Xi’an Jiaotong and Liverpool universities, don’t show that Westerners have now confident enough to go further than Singapore?

Who knows? I think Singapore is going to have to raise its game a bit. I know the government is putting a lot of effort into this, so let’s wish them well.

We’re the /nice/ sharks…

I’ve been meaning for a while to write about a talk I attended a couple of weeks ago. The topic was venture capital and new company creation in China. Muskie has written about it in more detail than I can, so I’ll just point you there. I was dubious about the VC’s propostion: they rent out office space in the Tsinghua Scince Park, and are quite explicit that rents there are much higher than in comparable office buildings nearby. They justify this by saying that the Tsinghua name adds value, and that they -the VCs – add extra value through ‘connections’. Maybe – but if I was a struggling, undercapitalised entrepreneur, I know I would like to see something concrete to back this assertion up before I set up shop. You know, figures of some sort to quantify this ‘added value”…..

Anyhow, I’m not the only person to be sceptical of VCs. I was reminded of the topic, and spurred to write this post, by re-reading a Wired article about Winprog, and IRC channel that the article’s author is trying to identify as the sole source of late 90s internet innovation. Lots of the interviewees seem rather sceptical of the idea, or alternativley are trying to send it up. Anyway, the choice quote was “My own experience with incubators was something akin to, ‘Come work in our offices and give us half your stock, and we’ll answer your telephone and pretend we’re providing lots of other resources.’ So there, Mr VC…